Wednesday, October 20, 2004

BBC = filthy propaganda-merchants

At least, that's the inevitable reaction of any rabidly pro-Bush right-wingers who get a chance to see (or hear about) the superb documentary The Power of Nightmares: The Politics of Fear which just aired on BBC2. If you missed it, leave it a couple of days and hope it appears online. If not, part 2 can be seen at 9pm next Wednesday.

According to the superbly-researched film, and the many high-profile interviewees contained within, our current fucked-up situation can basically be blamed on Leo Strauss - the inspiration for NeoCons like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz - and Sayyid Qutb - the bloke who inspired the bloke who inspired Osama bin Laden. I would go into more detail, but I'm tired, it's late, and this Guardian article summarises it fairly effectively anyway:

"Straussian conservatism had a previously unsuspected amount in common with Islamism: from origins in the 50s, to a formative belief that liberalism was the enemy, to an actual period of Islamist-Straussian collaboration against the Soviet Union during the war in Afghanistan in the 80s (both movements have proved adept at finding new foes to keep them going)."

This is - sadly - no sloppy conspiracy theory, but strangely compelling, and almost cliched in its Orwellian tone. The war with the Soviet Union is over. The war on terror has just begun.

It's all rather scary, but then again we knew that anyway, and as this superb documentary demonstrates pretty much conclusively, that's the whole point...

5 Comments:

I've been pondering the fact that the left seems to fear their vision of the oppressive christians next door more than Islamo-fascists somewhere 'out there'. Especially when after 200 years of White Christian dominated America there isn't anything resembling the taliban here.

Could it be that your version of oppressive christianity is more likely what really doesn't exist rather than the terrorist threat?

On a related subject (distant relative) when is the EU going to settle for a single seat in the UN, like the US has, and also a single seat in the security council. What's fair is fair, and if you are going to represent yourself as a Union you're entitled to only ONE seat in both places. After all, the Soviet Union only got one just like us.

An alternative suggestion would be to give the US seats for all 50 states (red and blue) and let us rotate, like the other countries, as member and chair of the Security Council. It would be neat to see our own ambassador from Louisiana heading the SC. I bet Rhode Island would get a kick out of it too. This would be no more out of place than seeing it rotate to Cuba or Belarus (or Belgium).

To relate this to our current thread this would also save us both the money and space in our capitals for all of these embassies and the largely useless diplomats that infest them. One in Brussels for the US, one in DC for the EU. How soon can we get this done??!!